Just Someone to Love
by Marianne Greenleaf
Summary: Marian Paroo tries really hard to hate Harold Hill. Thanks to him, she doesn't dream of white knights any longer.


_A/N – A direct sequel to Sadder But Wiser. Because of course Marian couldn't let Harold do all the talking!_

XXX

Marian Paroo is used to men leering at her as if they know exactly what she looks like beneath her camisole and drawers. _He_ looks at her like he doesn't know, but desperately wants to find out.

The difference may be infinitesimal, but it terrifies her. Especially because he moves with such alluring confidence and grace. Whenever she sees him strolling about town – or, god forbid, dancing – she has to quell her body's natural instinct to sway in time to his mesmerizing tune.

She marches to and from places all the time now, not like a bombastic bandleader, but like a woman forcefully and meticulously fleeing from temptation. She doesn't dare make the mistake of Lot's wife and look back at Sodom as she flees. It wouldn't be a pillar of salt that she turns into, but a puddle of warm and wet and aching _need_, undone by the touch of his clever fingers on her wrist and the caress of his soft mouth against her cheek. (It doesn't help matters that she can easily imagine his deep velvety voice, smooth and rich as honey, purring into her ear as his hands deftly untie the laces of her corset. Too easily.)

Thanks to him, she doesn't dream of white knights any longer. Every time she tries, she can only see his face: those too-warm brown eyes that twinkle dangerously at her and that horribly smoldering grin that makes her feel as if she is no longer in control of her own faculties. When he looks at her like _that_, it costs her more than he or anyone else will ever know to glare back at him with ice in her eyes. This town crushed the hope of romance and even friendship for her, but they couldn't take her cherished idea of a white knight. Instead, a fly-by-night salesman has waltzed in and plucked that beautiful dream from her fingers as carelessly and callously as a bully taking a toy from a child. For this, she would loathe him till she died.

She can't play the piano anymore, either. It used to be her escape, now she thinks of him whenever a concerto or symphony grows particularly romantic, or poignant, or wistful. As her tiny fingers roll over the chords and arpeggios, she gets the most disconcerting jolts of pleasure deep in the pit of stomach, as though Harold Hill has already found his way beneath her camisole and drawers – beneath her skin to the very core of her soul – though he'll never, ever know this. So he's ruined both white knights and music for her.

She won't even _look_ at Balzac, lest he destroy reading for her, as well.

Mama, of course, is thrilled that she has a suitor. She's been anxious to marry her off ever since Marian turned sixteen. Normally, she bears her mother's ridiculous mania for matchmaking with patient amusement because she knows it's done out of love, however misguided, rather than the desire to get rid of her. But when it comes to Harold Hill, she feels true annoyance, and firmly rebuffs her mother's constant suggestions that she give the swindler a chance. Even Mama would not approve if she understood just what the fast-talking conman truly wanted from her daughter. But like everyone else in this silly little town, she has fallen under his insidious spell. Marian would not allow herself to be caught in the gossamer webs he was deftly weaving around her.

And yet… she catches him spying on her early one evening, concealed in a bush and unabashedly staring at her through the library's largest window. It isn't the wanting in his eyes that bothers her – she's well used to that by now – it's the mingled fear, confusion, and awe that she finds most unnerving. She knows this look intimately: the same disconcerting combination of emotions has been swirling in her stomach from the moment he first followed her home. And for once, there is absolutely no calculation in his inexorable gaze. He looks like a man thoroughly undone, a man who is genuinely besotted but doesn't quite know what to do about it. No man has ever looked at her that way before.

She can't look away. Against all sense or reason, she stares right back into his eyes, knowing she's radiating the same desperate longing but unable to stop herself. In his gaze she sees everything she has ever wanted: white knights, music, a depth of passion and feeling that makes her body, heart, and soul sing. Harold Hill may not know her, and he's certainly not a Lancelot or an angel with wings. But he can _see_ her, just as she can see him.

If not for the window between them, she'd be his for the taking. She doubts she'd be able to resist even if he gives her that terribly charming arrogant smile. But he doesn't revel in his triumph. Instead, he looks even more flustered by her capitulation. It's frighteningly endearing, to see that he's just as bewitched by this unwise and unfathomable attraction between them. She does not love this man, but she could. Too easily.

Fortunately, Providence spares her the dreadful fate of Lot's wife: the building creaks, she jumps and drops the book she completely forgot she was holding, and the queer hold he has over her dissipates. And then the anger comes, as she knew it would. She embraces it wholeheartedly, using its comforting warmth to keep the dangerous heat of wanting at bay. Now, she doesn't even want a white knight, or to play the piano, or to read anything but the most sedate and dense of academic treatises. As the days pass, her ire continues unabated – indeed, it only increases each time he tries to talk to her, or grins at her, or simply just walks by with that maddeningly debonair gait of his – and she thinks that she's finally defeated the treacherous yearnings of her body. She revels in her triumph, especially when she finds the page recounting the true history of Gary Conservatory in the _Indiana State Educational Journal_. She is David, and she will bring down Goliath with her carefully cast stone.

But just as she's starting to show the book to the mayor, the Wells Fargo wagon comes to town.

When Winthrop's eyes light up at his shiny new cornet and he bursts with all the joy she's ever wanted for her beloved little brother, her fury dissipates like the fog over the cornfields when the sun fully rises. After she finishes hugging the utterly transformed boy, she looks up into the avid and wanting eyes of Harold Hill, the man who calls himself a bandleader. He is standing terrified and transfixed, as if his whole world is hinging on her reaction.

This time, there is no window between them. So she smiles at him with both her mouth and her eyes, as she has never dared to smile at any man before. When he beams at her with sheer relief and delight as well as triumph, she allows him to take her hand in his (her other hand is wholly occupied in hiding the incriminating proof of what he is behind her back) and gently tug her to her feet.


End file.
